


Wing Your Way To Me

by LaShaRa



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dragons, First Meetings, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 06:05:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9222254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaShaRa/pseuds/LaShaRa
Summary: The one where Mick is volcanic and gorgeous, Len needs a lot of cuddling but is also gorgeous, Lisa is badass, and Lewis Snart gets what he deserves.





	1. Waking Up In A Volcano

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JQ (musicmillennia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicmillennia/gifts).



> Here's my contribution to Superlot Dragon Week 2017! I confess that I foresee this taking a little longer than a week, but whatever, I'm in love with Dragon!Coldwave and I know everyone else is too. Dedicated to JQ (musicmillenia) because they are the undisputed ruler of dragon fics.

Len is barely fourteen moons old when his nestfather finally manages to leave him behind.

On the night it happens, they’re flying north into the wildest snowstorm Len has ever had to fight, two days into the half-moon flight which always followed one of his father’s raids. This one had been a dragon target rather than a human one – the Queens Nest of Starling, no less – which accounts at first for how fast his father and his crew – Len can never think of them as wingbrothers – are flying. But after an hour of flying through – or being beaten to death by – endless clouds of ice, and never catching one glimpse of the others, that sick feeling that began the moment Len’s nestfather insisted that Lisa, Len’s nestsister, fly under his wing tonight, solidifies into one sickening lump in his stomach and his wings nearly stop beating.

He screams into the wind. His voice shatters into nothingness the moment it leaves his jaws, crushed by the sheer force of gale and snow and ice that is beginning to drown him. He’s flying blind now, scrambling on simply because there’s nothing else he can do; he knows already that he’ll never outfly this storm. He’s a Blood-Ice, the first throwback in generations of Changewings, but contrary to popular opinion, excessive cold will kill his kind. Len passed the point of excessive cold several hours ago.

The ice finds its way into him, creeping through his wings and his lungs and his heart, malevolent dark moon ice which can freeze the fires which freeze everything else. Len goes numb until he’s not even sure if he’s flying anymore, and a deep ache settles into every scale and cell of his, worse than the fire with which his nestfather stripes him, brands which broil scales one moment and gouge out flesh the next. Len’s lost in the howling cold and the roaring dark and when the crash comes, as he’d known it would, his last coherent thought is that he’s left Lisa to face the brands alone.

He wakes up warmer that he’s ever been in his life.

“Well, look at that. Wouldn’t have taken you for a cuddler,” something rumbles.

Len is fifty feet in the air before he realizes that he’s not dead, he can actually move his wings, and he’s hovering about a twentieth of the way up the mouth of what appears to be an active volcano. Having confirmed that there’s nothing above him to impede him if he needs to escape, he looks down.

Curled around the rim of a steaming lava pool is the most stunning dragon Len has ever seen.

He’s male, his scent cloud tells Len that much, and the dark rings moving up the skin of his foreleg indicate that he’s not so much older than Len, maybe sixteen moons old. The similarities stop there. Len is twenty feet long from snout to tail and he already knows that even fully grown he won’t amount to much more. Everything about him is streamlined and pared back to the bare necessities, built for speed and sneaking around. The dragon below him is easily fifty feet long already. His hexagon scales, glorious shades of crimson and gold shot with obsidian, do nothing to hide the fact that every inch of him is thickly muscled and ready for a fight. His tail and wings are folded out of sight, but Len can still tell that they’re intimidating. A thick ruff protects his neck, occasionally studded with short gold tusks and seeming to mimic the colour of the lava pool and his blunt jaws don’t quite hide all his teeth. But in spite of the fact that Len has never seen a creature as blatantly built for destruction, there is none of his nestfather’s acid in the dragon’s amber eyes, none of his crew’s greed and malice. He’s watching Len, and there’s something Len doesn’t understand in his expression.

“How did I get here?” Len asks, after the craters around him have hissed and bubbled fierily for a few moments, although he already knows the answer. 

“You crashed into the next peak over.” The dragon’s voice is a low, earthquake rumble. “Saw you when I was flying in from a hunting trip, figured you could use some warming up.” 

“You saved my life.”

“Weren’t nothing.” The dragon coils himself a little tighter around his crater. “You can quit wearing those wings out, you know. I didn’t fish you out of the freezing cold to have to fish you out of my lava streams too.”

Len perches himself that’s just high enough above the lava to be warm without scorching him. “What are you?”

The dragon blinks at him. “Name’s Mick.”

Len stares at him. Names are precious among dragonfolk – identification among strangers depends on the names of nests and wingclans. He’s not even sure he knows the name of another dragon apart from Lisa. “No, I meant – what’s your nest called? Your breed?”

Mick stares right back. “And I was so sure you were a smart one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mick tilts his ruff at his surroundings. “Well, I obviously live in a volcano. And surely you’ve seen Flameveins on your visits to Molten?” When Len doesn’t respond, he adds, “You’ve reached fourteen moons – how can you have never seen a Flamevein in fourteen visits to Molten?”

Len feels like he’s back in the snowstorm, expect less terrified and more confused. “Molten?”

Mick looks at him with something like pity on his face. “Fucking hell. Your nestparents still call it The Happy Place, don’t they?” 

“My nestmother’s dead,” Len answers, still struggling to process all the information he’s being given. “And my nestfather’s never taken me or my nestsister anywhere that had…Flameveins. Or volcanoes. Or anything happy, really.”

Mick uncoils himself so fast that Len takes off again, holding himself ready for anything as the bigger dragon unfurls a long, strangely sinuous tail that ends in a clutch of sharp gold tusks. “What kind of goddamn Blood-Ice nestfather doesn’t fly their kids to Molten every full moon? No wonder you’re so damn skinny. That’s like a Flamevein herd not spending winter in the Icebanks.”

“My nestfather’s a Changewing,” Len tells him, not understanding why this is so important. Sure he’s a little thin. Lisa has to get enough meat somehow, seeing as his nestfather forgets to give her any. He tamps down on the twinge of worry that grips him at the thought of Lisa and carries on, “Anyway, if it matters so much, why are you in this volcano alone instead of with your herd in the…Icebanks?”

Mick’s ruff darkens a few shades. “They’re dead. And I can’t stand the Icebanks. Something wrong with my wiring.” For a moment his eyes slide towards the largest lava pool, which is belching red flames and hot gushes of acid, but then he turns back to Len. “Plenty of Blood-Ice have Changewing nestparents, it’s where you get your camouflage from – although you don’t seem to have broken yours out yet,” he says, eyeing Len’s pure white scales. “Still no excuse.”

“Well, it’s not like it matters,” snaps Len, suddenly tired of this conversation about a life which he apparently should have had. The storm has blown itself out above the volcano, which means that he’s lost at least half a day. He has to get back in the air. “My nestfather’s probably halfway across the continent by now, and my sister’s trapped with him, so thanks for saving my life, but I really can’t afford to be discussing the summer holidays of our respective breeds with you.”

This time he makes it seventy feet up before Mick rumbles, “Kid, wait.”

Len doesn’t know why he turns, but he does. His wings hum, keeping him airborne. Mick’s amber eyes have dimmed a little. “Trips to Molten or Icebanks aren’t holidays. They’re breeding flights. Growing flights. It’s about figuring out who you are in the place where you’re at your best. Everything important that ever happens to you will happen there.” He begins to coil his tail around a tall rock formation, as if he’s anchoring himself to the volcano. “When you get your sister away from your nestfather, you take her to Molten, Blood-Ice.”

“Do you want to fly with me?”

The words are out of Len’s mouth before he realizes what he’s saying. From the way Mick’s tail suddenly goes slack and crashes to the floor, sending chunks of rock flying  
through the air, it was the last thing he expected as well. “You want me for a wingbrother?” he demands. “Why the hell would you?”

“My nestfather travels with a crew. I can’t save my nestsister alone,” Len tells him. “And if you help me, you can come with us to this Molten place, wherever it is, see if you like it better than – Icebanks, wasn’t it? - or we can help you get somewhere you do like.”

The real reason, the one which has been making itself known to Len since he woke up all snuggled into Mick’s side, is that despite the confusion and worry and anger jostling for room in his head, Len has never felt as comfortable as he does in Mick’s presence. He’s never been calmed the way the dry, heady scent of Mick’s ashy scent cloud calms him; he’s never been so damn warm. Still, whatever his instincts tell him, he’s not going to confess as much to a strange dragon who’s more than twice his size, even if said dragon did save his life. Although from the look of barely hidden awe and delight spreading across Mick’s face, he doesn’t think he needs to. “You in?” Len prompts, just to be sure. Words count for a lot among dragonfolk.

“Sure, Blood-Ice,” rumbles Mick. With a rush of heated air, his wings burst their way into the space behind his ruff, ash-black, ember-red, edged with the same gold tusks as his ruff and tail, and spanning nearly sixty feet. “Sure, I’m in.”

“My nestsister’s not Blood-Ice, by the way,” Len decides to tell Mick as they soar over the lip of the volcano into an icy blue sky. If they’re going up against his nestfather’s crew, Mick needs all the information Len can give him. “She’s a Goldspark. And my name’s Len.”

“Len,” Mick rumbles. His voice is deep even in the rush of the wind and his huge wings beat once for every three beats of Len’s. “Len.” He grins, all uneven teeth, and Len has to catch himself before he falls out of the air. “Chart us a course then, Lenny,” continues Mick, apparently choosing not to notice. “Let’s go find your sister.”


	2. Out Of The Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter sorta kinda maybe ran away with me. I was meaning to get to the actual rescuing here, but had too much fun exploring Mick's POV and all the fluffiness attached. Because, feelings.

Mick misses his volcano. If he was back there, he could stick his forelegs up to the elbow in the hottest lava pool he had. It would hurt, but that’s the point. He’d wake up. He needs to wake up, because he can’t afford to stay in the kind of dream which will break him into pieces when it finally fades away.

Until he can wake himself up, though, he’s going to enjoy it because, well, Lenny’s fucking gorgeous. 

Mick wasn’t kidding about how important the full-moon flights to your breed’s home territory were. Back when he was still in his sixth moon and before his herd burned, he’d met a few Blood-Ice passing through the Icebanks to indulge an eccentric young nestsibling with an irrational passion for snow, much like Mick’s passion for fire. Len didn’t have their camouflage, or their featherblades, or the gills which allowed them to make subterranean dives; in fact, when Mick had spotted him in that snowdrift, he’d thought it was Caitlyn, the two-moon Frostbreath dragonet from a few ranges over, who had a penchant for getting lost. But the further they fly in the sparkling air, the more Mick realizes that he’s never met any Blood-Ice, any dragon, quite like Len. Len is all lithe, angular limbs and long, serrated tail; heavy claws curve out of his talons and Mick glimpses spikes sheathed behind each leg. His wings are streamlined and intricate and seem to have a mind of their own; his head, perched at the end of a curving neck, is elegant in a way Mick’s is never going to be. 

His diamond scales catch fire where the sun hits them and his huge eyes are storm grey flecked with blue.

Mick’s never seen anything so beautiful.

He’s also never met anyone so clueless. Len doesn’t seem to understand that things like, say, eating, or sleeping, are actually vital to a dragon’s good health, let alone understanding the idea of health; when Mick suggests that Len eats something after half a day of continuous flying, Len looks confused and reminds him of the two hawks he’d absently snapped up about five hours ago, at which point Mick knocks him out of the sky with a buffet of his wing and dives. Shrieking with rage, Len rights himself and chases Mick savagely through several miles of forest; he bursts out of the trees into a clearing and lunges for Mick before he sees the several fat deer which Mick had snagged along the way. “What the hell?”

“You need to eat,” Mick tells him, like it wasn’t obvious. 

“Are you crazy? Blood-Ice never eat like that in one day!” 

“Your nestfather tell you that?” grunts Mick and watches at Len twitches. “Yeah, I thought so. Now listen. We ain’t never going to catch your dad and get away alive with your sister unless you’re in good condition. That - ” he nods at Len’s ribs, “- is not good condition. And Blood-Ice never eat like that in one day, you’re right. They eat like that in one sitting.”

Len looks at the meat and his eyes turn a little bit bluer. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Are you gonna quit asking questions or do I have to pick the vital organs out and feed them to you like a two-month-old?”

Len glares at him and takes hold of the nearest haunch with a set of long, lethal fangs. Mick goes off into the forest and catches ten more deer with his tusks, because he may not be smart or well-balanced, but he’s a damn good hunter. When he comes back, no longer hungry and carrying a few larger specimens he wants to take his time with, the clearing looks like the site of a meteor strike and Len is engrossed in trying to extract bone marrow with his elbow talons. He glances shamefacedly up and gives Mick a sheepish and slightly bloody smile, then fixates on Mick’s haul. Mick watches the way pride struggles with envy on Len’s face before guffawing and tossing the remaining deer towards him. 

“Blood-Ice don’t eat like that, do they?”

Already halfway through the pile, Len glares at him. Mick senses a theme here. “Shut up.”

They don’t fly through the night because Len was dead the night before, and even if he insists that he’s flown longer stretches that this – and he’s probably not lying, given the sort of nestfather he has - Mick hasn’t. They’re pretty far north now, and a frost-covered forest is the warmest place Mick can find for them to touch down. Len doesn’t seem to mind, though – Mick supposes after falling out of a raging blizzard, a little frost doesn’t do much. It’s when Len starts stretching his wings this way and that, making little grunts and whistles to himself, that Mick glances across from where he’s warming up a place to sleep – by which he means turning most of the forest into firewood – and sees the brands running up his spine.

Any brand is a curse, but Changefire is the worst because you never know which kind of pain it’ll cause you next.

Len folds his wings away and turns around, stopping short when he sees the angry glow of Mick’s ruff. It takes him maybe two seconds to run back through the last few minutes and figure out what set him off. “It’s not so bad,” he murmurs quietly. “My nestsister hasn’t got any.”

“Because you got in the way.”

Len’s blue eyes are confused. “Why do you care, Mick? You barely know me.”

Instead of contradicting this – and having to confront his own suspicions about why he cares, and also the signals which Len’s scent cloud is sending him now that it’s been made stronger by good food and not swallowed up by sky wind – Mick forces his ruff to calm the fuck down and pads his way to the edge of the now smouldering clearing. “Get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

There’s a little pause. Then he hears the soft click of Len’s claws on the ground, followed by a rush of air and a few creaks as Len launches himself into a tree on the other side of the clearing. The Blood-Ice nested high in the red cliffs of Molten when they weren’t rolling around in its dunes, Mick remembers dimly. He hears Len’s teeth snap a few times, his tail slice through a few clumps of leaves, and then nothing. The forest has gone quiet around them, mostly due to the sudden presence of two undisputed leaders of the food chain. Mick drifts off to sleep.

Sometime past midnight, he wakes up with something amazingly cool and soothing and familiar pressing into his side. Len snuffles and whistles in his sleep, one of his wings stretched halfway up Mick’s ribcage. Mick extends his wing, tucks it carefully around Len, who snuggles closer, and goes back to sleep, the fiery beast in his bones a little quieter.

They don’t talk about it the next morning. Len goes off to cool his burning face in a stream with subzero temperatures and Mick has a stern talk with his ruff. 

They keep flying north and Len gets twitchier. He stops talking, eats half a herd of sheep without really tasting them, and won’t stop sniffing the air. It takes Mick a while to catch up; living in a volcano means his scent detection isn’t always at its finest. So far they haven’t crossed many scent trails – a few Frostbreaths, and a Skyclimber, shy breeds that love the cold and know how to keep out of sight. But as evening comes on the air grows thick with scents, angry and lustful and evil. Mick picks up one dominant strain, an ugly, malevolent thing which makes him want to stick its owner’s head down a lava lake, and from the way Len shudders Mick knows he’s recognized it. His tongue doesn’t stop flicking out and tasting the air, though, but there isn’t the faintest trace of sunshiney Goldspark scent. Mick tries not to think of what that might mean.

It’s sunset when they find the crew. Len circles in the wind, counting the individual scent trails that dive out of the sky, while Mick surveys the ground below them. He doesn’t like what he sees. The terrain is desolate and sparsely forested; he doesn’t see how a group of fully grown dragons can hide out here for any length of time without eating each other, and says as much to Len when he flies back. Len snorts. “There’s a reason my nestfather kept me around,” he hisses. “I made the plans and organized the getaways. He probably flew too far too fast, then dropped down at the last possible moment in the first place he could find.” He jerks his head at a single outcrop of mountains. “That’s where he’ll be. He’s not smart enough to find anywhere less conspicuous than that – which is stupid, considering he stole from the Queen’s Nest and Oliver will be coming for him with everything they’ve got.”

“Your father pulled off a successful raid on the Queen’s Nest of Starling?” Mick can’t help exclaiming. 

“No he didn’t,” says Len, smirking. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Mick is impressed. Len’s next words, however, sober him immediately. “I didn’t scent my nestsister.”

“We’ll find her,” Mick reassures him. “You raided Oliver Queen. You can outmaneuver your lousy father and his dipshit friends with your eyes shut.”

Len gives him a tight smile and dives. Mick follows him, trying to figure out when he got this sappy.

They land in darkening pine forest a few miles east of the mountain. Mick’s about to ask Len which direction they should approach the target from when Len says, “I think it’s better if I go scouting alone.”

Something clenches in Mick’s chest and he struggles with all his strength to keep his ruff an impassive brick red. “Sure.” Of course Len wouldn’t want him stampeding in behind him, setting the forest on fire and getting them killed. He must not be successful, though, because Len’s eyes go wide. “No, Mick! No! I don’t mean – I want you with me – but I don’t know what’s going on there. We don’t even know – if my nestsister’s alive. If I’m caught – I can pretend I found my way to them and maybe distract my nestfather so that my sister can get away. But if he sees you with me – he’ll know. And he may be a useless bastard most of the time, but he has eight dragons on his crew, Mick, and we can’t take them all at once.”

Mick gets what he’s saying. They’re only going to get one shot at this and they can’t afford to go in blind. Len’s the one with experience, and they need his plan. But some dark part of him, the part where the fire lives, whispers that Len doesn’t need him. That Len’s brilliant, brilliant enough to sneak his sister out and fly away with her, leaving Mick to take the fall when his father and his crew tear the mountains apart looking for her. What else would a lumbering Flamevein who let his herd burn because of the unnatural fire in his bones be good for?

But Len’s watching him with wide, worried eyes, and Mick doesn’t want to add more tension to what he’s already going through, even if he gets ditched for it. “I get it, Len,” he says. “You go scout it out. I’ll – I’ll hunt us up something to eat, we can’t do this on an empty stomach.” And then he leans over and nuzzles Len’s head very, very gently, because if this is the last time he ever sees him, he needs a memory of that diamond coolness against his scales. Len stiffens in surprise, and then nudges back, giving him a tentative smile. “See you in a few hours, Mick,” he says, and then he’s gone, a flash of lightning in the gathering dusk.

Mick goes hunting, accumulates an assortment of large prey animals, eats a few, and after that he has nothing to do but wait. The air feels cold and unfriendly without Len’s scent cloud blooming at his side every time there’s no wind to whisk it away, the forest too still without all Len’s little noises, his hisses of annoyance and his yelps of delight, his triumphant hunting shriek, the snuffles and hiccups he makes in his sleep. Mick’s known him two days and it feels like forever. This, he knows from the stories his nestmother used to tell him, is due in part to the way dragons age at speed, living every nuance of every moment and forgetting nothing, pleasure and pain alike. But there’s something different in the way that Len’s imprinted himself onto his consciousness. Something separates his memories of Len from his memories of the night his herd burned, or the day he came across Caitlyn and her Windwing and Thundercall friends Barry and Cisco and realized that he could be around other dragons again. Len calms the fire in his bones; Len can lead him back into the cold. 

Mick calls up the memory of Len’s scent cloud, cool and sharp and tangy, and a word swims up to the surface of his mind, a word which he never knew he knew until this moment, a word which makes his ruff turn all the colours of an exploding star.

Wingmate.

And suddenly Len is there in the space before him, glowing in the now complete gloom of the forest, his eyes shining wild and fierce, and it’s all Mick can do to keep from blurting out the truth. “Lenny,” he rumbles.

“I found her, Mick,” hisses Len. “I found Lisa.”

His nestsister’s name hangs in the clearing, and it sounds like trust and promises and you came back to me. Len grins, all teeth, and his wings spread out in the darkness, sending a wave of peace and want and wonder through Mick. Crap, he thinks.

His ruff flares on through the night and he lets Len assume it’s because he’s excited to finally get into action. He ignores the words, because he can’t deal with this now. 

Wingmatewingmatewingmate.


	3. The Sins Of The Father

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one turned out to have a little more vicious!Len than I'd intended, but then again, I sometimes think he's too nice for his own good.

Len is cold again.

He’s been cold ever since he and Mick split up a mile from where his nestfather and his crew have settled for the night. He misses the solid, unswerving heat that emanates from Mick, the bright colours of his scales, the deep, reassuring rumble of his voice, the grounding dryness of his scent. He hadn’t wanted to split up, but in the end there was no other way. His nestfather and Lisa were holed up in a cave high on the mountain; his eight crewmembers were camping in a clearing a mile and a half below them. Len had assumed he’d been the one going up against his nestfather. He hadn’t expected Mick to refuse to let him.

“No, Lenny. He knows you too well. He’ll be expecting you. He knows how to get under your scales. But he’s not expecting me.”

“You can’t take him alone!” Len had protested. “He’s forty feet long, Mick, and he’s a cunning bastard even if he isn’t smart. And what about Lisa? She’ll be terrified out of her mind when she sees you!”

Mick had bent down to look him in the eye then. “Lenny, I need you to trust me on this,” he’d rumbled. “I’m not going to let anything happen to your sister. And in terms of size, I’m a much better match for your father than you are.”

“So sending me to attack eight dragons that are more or less the same size as my father instead of just him, that makes more sense to you, does it?”

“Yes, because you’re not going to attack them.” Mick paused. “Not right away, at least.”

Now, Len pauses on the edge of a clearing. He can dimly make out enormous, supine forms scattered around it and counts carefully until he has all eight mapped out. A shudder runs down his spine and out to his wingtips as he recognizes their features – Malcolm’s skull-like face, Darhk’s silver fangs, Slade’s three scythe-like tails. These are the dragons who made his life hell and took away Lisa’s innocence and he’s suddenly terrified of what could happen if even one of them wakes before he’s done. But Mick’s words come back to him. “There’s more to you than you can even imagine, Lenny. Things that’ve been passed down to you from the First-Born, things that are just waiting for you to wake them. Things that your father and his crew aren’t ever going to have. You’ve got so much fucking power. It’s up to you to let it fight for you.”

Len looks up through the trees, and as if on cue, a jet of flame shoots into the air.

Time to end this. Time to get his sister back. Time to win his freedom.

Len shuts his eyes and reaches deep into himself. He reaches for his nestfather, and every brand he ever laid on him, every acid insult he ever spat at him, every humiliation, every hunger, every betrayal. He reaches for the crew and their exploitation and their abuse and the terror they inspired in him on Lisa’s behalf. He reaches for Lisa, golden Lisa with her beauty and her courage and her tiny smiles and baby songs when he sneaks her some hunk of meat or pretty jewel. He reaches for the life he wants her to have, the life he wants for himself.

He reaches for Mick.

Mick, with his strength and his beauty and his kindness and his loyalty, Mick who went to fight his father because Len couldn’t, Mick who, Len already knows, wants only the best for Len and Lisa. Mick who is his, who is more than the volcanic dragon who saved his life, more than a wingbrother, more than a hunting partner, the warmth he’s been missing his whole life - Mick is – Mick is – 

Wingmate.

Mick is wingmate. Mick is his wingmate. And Len will be damned if he’ll let any of these bastards touch him.

Len opens his eyes, cracks his jaw wide, and breathes. The enormous cloud that rolls out into the night air is as white as his scales and smells of ice. It drifts over the sleeping dragons, long tendrils snaking into their snouts and gathering around their ears and eyesockets, settling along their wings and tails. None of them move. Len waits a few breaths, watches them lie motionless, and then he thinks one last time of Mick and Lisa and takes to the air.

He tears open Malcolm’s throat with his teeth, rips a line down his chest with his elbow blade and gouges his heart out with both foreclaws. His mist has worked its fatal magic; Malcolm does not stir as he dies, nor do the others react as black blood soaks the ground and splashes their scales. And now Len can’t stop. His jaws spread wide, every blade on his body extends, and he tears and gouges and slices, and he would be terrified at how easily it comes to him if he wasn’t so furious. They die silently and he doesn’t realize that his control of the mist is slipping until he reaches Slade, whom he’s left for last, and the dragon opens his eyes just as Len carves open his throat. 

Len stares. Of all his tormentors Slade was the worst. Malcolm loved mind games and Dahrk reveled in violence, but his nestfather's bloody battles and raids were usually enough for them. But Slade was brutal all the time and Len, and later Lisa, were his favorite victims; every time he looked at him Len could see every one of his twisted desires, just biding their time. The worst brand Len had ever been given was on the night he'd clawed out Slade's right eye, the night he went after Lisa, then just a month old. 

Slade is gurgling. The slash in his throat is so deep that there's not much more he can do; his three scythes thrash uselessly just out of reach. "Come on, kid," he hisses, blood bubbling between his teeth. "Let's not pretend you have the guts-"

Len's claws have blinded him in the other eye before he finishes speaking. For a second there’s silence and then Slade's tails thump to the ground. Len perches on his blackening corpse and snarls quietly, looking from carcass to carcass. The whole thing hasn’t even taken three minutes. It takes him a few seconds to notice that the sky above him is red with flame and that someone is roaring. He stares up at the flashes and sparks for a moment more and then feeling crashes back and with it realization.

Mick!

Len hurls himself into the sky, shrieking what he will later realize is the call of murder. Mick is his wing mate, and his nestfather will not touch him; Len will rip him wing from wing, gouge his heart out through his chest, put out his eyes with shards of ice-

He bursts onto the bare plateau which fronts his nestfather's cave and realizes that he doesn't need to do any of that.

On the other side of the plateau, facing the cave, there's a dragon who's Mick and also not Mick. He's standing on his hind legs, wings spread to either side for balance, and they light up the entire mountain and half the sky beyond it. His ruff is meteor bright, his tusks are glowing, and his scales are shifting colour so fast that it makes Len dizzy look at them. And spewing from his jaws is a wave of lava brighter than anything Len has ever seen, curving through the air in glorious arcs and shattering in burning droplets against the stone like something both animal and mineral. Len looks for the mouth of the cave and finds only a wall of lava and flame. Now and then a purple shadow splotches against the flames like a wave rolling under ice and a high, enraged wail wavers faintly through the bellowing flames, but it's Mick who's doing most of the roaring that Len heard. He can smell sulphuric in the air and realizes that Mick's heat mist is thirty times more powerful than his own, weakening his father beyond anything he ever dreamed of; Len himself has to focus on his conviction that he's Mick's true wingmate and has the right to approach him in order not to succumb to it. Mick seems to have no problem with expelling tons of molten lava and maintaining an overpowering heat mist at the same time, although the fact that he still hasn't noticed Len could mean that it's taking everything he has.

Len's so engrossed in watching Mick’s fire that he almost misses the little flash of gold just under his ruff, just a shade too light to be one of his tusks.

"Lisa!"

Despite the fact that Mick should by rights be drowning out all sound with his roar, Lisa hears his shriek. "Lenny!" she screams and then she's across the plateau and in his arms, sobbing and laughing at the same time. Len would love nothing more than to hug her and hold her and check every inch of her for injuries, but they have to get out of here before the scent of the massacre below attracts unwanted attention. He tucks Lisa onto his back and scrambles across to Mick. "Mick, we gotta go!"

Mick doesn't even hear him. Len hovers in front of him, dodging the jets of lava that spew from his mouth and avoiding being clipped in the head by one of Mick’s mammoth wings. Lisa clings to him, terrified into silence. Mick’s not trying to hurt them, Len’s sure of it; he’s just caught up in the roar of the flames and the lava, the heat, the ferocity, the power. “Mick, that’s enough!” he yelps desperately. “He’s not getting out of there, Mick, and Lisa’s safe – we need to go before someone else comes for us!”

There’s no response. Mick’s glazed eyes are slowly turning from amber to scarlet. Len can’t reach him, not when he’s like this. All his senses are muted by the fire, but the blades behind his elbows are humming with unease. Something is coming. They need to go. But he can’t go without Mick. 

“Lisa,” he hisses, retreating a few dozen feet away. “I need you to let go of me for a bit.”

She doesn’t move. Len turns and finds her looking from him to Mick with wide, petrified eyes. “Lenny, what are you doing?”

“I need to get his attention, Lise, I can’t leave without him.” All his blades are quivering, and he tries not to let Lisa see. “Trust me, Lisa, he’s not going to hurt us. I just need to make him see me, okay?”

Lisa gives him a small, uncertain nod. 

“Let go, sis.”

She unwraps herself from his back and drops onto a boulder, her wings raised a few inches into the air, poised for flight. Len gives her what he hopes is a believable smile, and then flies warily back to Mick, who seems to be swaying with the effort of standing on his hind legs. What he’s about to do is complete madness, reckless and selfish and with potentially horrific consequences but – Mick is his wingmate, and he hasn’t even told him yet. He cannot leave him behind. 

Mick’s attention is completely focused on the mouth of the cave, which appears to be melting a little. Len hovers above him for a few wingbeats, glances at Lisa to make sure she’s staying well out of range, and then, before he can talk himself out of it, he darts forward and slices his tailblades into Mick’s blunt snout with all his strength.

There is almost no space between Len’s tail connecting with Mick’s scales and him landing on the side of the mountain with Mick on top of him. Lisa screams and Len just manages to fling a “Stay the hell back!” in her general direction. It’s difficult to breathe; all of Mick’s weight is pressing him into the rock. He may have broken some ribs. “Mick, it’s me!” he gasps. “It’s Len! Mick, it’s Len, dammit!”

Mick roars, and Len howls as residual streaks of lava eat into his scales, just one degree less painful than poison acid. Mick’s tongue flashes out to taste the air and his eyes go flat black; Len remembers too late that he’s coated from head to tail with the blood of dragons who Mick has already classified as threats to be exterminated. He twists out of the way as Mick roars again, dodging the lava but getting sprayed with blood from the wound on Mick’s snout. “Mick, please,” Len tries again, but he knows now that there’s no way he’s getting out of this. Len let him go off to fight his nestfather alone and at some point during that battle something sent Mick over the edge, and now he’s going to burn Len into nothingness without even knowing what he’s done. And Len will have made Lisa both an orphan and an only child in less than an hour. He just hopes she’s fast enough that she doesn’t end up dead to top it all off.

But then Mick leans down towards him, ancient duelling instincts prompting him to savour the kill he’s about to make, and Len forgets everything else. It takes him back to just a few hours ago, before his scouting trip, when Mick had nuzzled him and said he’d have their food ready, sounding all the while like he was talking through a mouth full of ashes, and it feels the same. Under the rage and the pain and the blind hate, Mick still smells like Mick, like warmth and home and I belong here, and Len knows that he can’t let Mick kill him without at least trying to let him know what he means. Len’s nestfather seems to have got the painful end he deserves, and if Lisa flies now, she’ll have her freedom and Len – if Len’s not going to get his life, he’s damn well going to get what he can out of these last few minutes.

As Mick pinions Len firmly between his forelegs and draws his head back so that his final lava jet will cover as large an area as possible, Len gathers all the breath in his lungs, all the remaining strength in his wings, every single thing he’s felt since waking up at Mick’s side two days ago, and exhales. He means to create another mist cloud, but what emerges is a filmy, iridescent wreath that floats through the air and settles over Mick’s ruff, reflecting the gold of his tusks and the scarlet of his scales before it dissipates among the flames.

Then he closes his eyes and waits for the roar that will turn him to dust.

It never comes.

He opens his eyes again. 

Mick is staring at Len, slack-jawed, his ruff suddenly a bright ochre-gold that Len has never seen it turn before. It distracts Len enough that he doesn’t realize right away that Mick’s eyes aren’t quite as glazed as before. “Mick?” he tries warily.

“Len-?” Mick rumbles. He removes his talons from Len’s chest as if they don’t belong to him, and Len struggles into the air, ignoring the wrench of pain from his ribs. “Yeah, Mick, it’s me.”

“What...I don’t...” Mick’s eyes slide around the plateau, from Len to the flaming cave entrance to where Lisa is cowering behind her boulder. “The hell...”

And then he sways. His ruff and scales darken abruptly, and Len’s gut wrenches again as he sees the indigo stains spreading across Mick’s wings and chest, rushing back to the surface now that the lava has stopped pulsing energy through him. “We have to get you out of here,” he says, glancing towards the burning cave. “It’s not safe. Can you fly?”

Mick extends his wings all the way out with difficulty and lumbers into the air with none of his usual power; Len feels Lisa land silently on his back, shaking with shock, and follows him, keeping close to his side in case Mick falters, although how he’s going to support a wounded dragon who’s at least thirty feet longer and broader than him for more than a minute he hasn’t the faintest idea. His ribs protest with every beat of his wings, the lava hasn’t quite stopped eating patches of his scales, and he’s still covered in dragon blood. Mick’s snout is still bleeding – Len’s blades mean serious business – but he doesn’t notice, seemingly focused on getting as high above the mountain as he can. Len is all in favour of this plan, because the rapidly cooling air gives him a chance to clear his head a little and try to work out their next move. However, his head is apparently clearing nowhere near fast enough, because he doesn’t even smell their welcoming party until they’re surrounded on all sides.

Oliver Queen is a fifty-five foot emerald Hood in his twelfth moon, and he’s icily furious. “There’s nowhere to go,” he informs Len. “Surrender yourself and your accomplices, Leonard Snart, and we won’t hurt you – too much.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Len hisses right back, trying to pretend that Mick not hurling obscenities at their challengers and listing slightly into Len is a perfectly normal state of affairs.

Queen shrugs, like he couldn’t care less either way. “Suit yourself,” he says. “Roy, take him.”

Len is so occupied in snarling pointlessly at the crimson Hood who fires a feathered poison quill in his direction that he doesn’t notice Lisa launch herself off his back and into its path until it’s too late. “LISA, NO!” he howls, starting after her even though he knows he’ll never catch up in time, and then a silver tailblade slices the quill apart in midair. Queen bellows, rounding on the Ebony Raptor beside him as she reels her blade back in. “Laurel, what the hell was that? They’re criminals! Roy, Digg, Rene, take them down now!”

“Hold!”

Everyone freezes. Mick’s head lifts a little. Len uses the distraction to drag Lisa back behind him by the scruff of her neck before looking up. 

Drifting towards them out of the night on white-gold wings is a powder-blue female dragon. She’s tiny, not much bigger than Len, and not much older than Lisa, but the air around her crackles and surges with a strange, intense power. Queen’s dragons make way as she approaches; the Raptor inclines her stately head and Queen himself drops a few feet below her. “Felicity?”

The dragon turns her head towards Len, Mick and Lisa, and her eyes are a whirlwind of colour, holding more shades than even Mick’s ruff. Her tongue flickers out and dances on the air for a moment, and then she declares, “Innocents.”

Len’s covered in the blood of eight murdered dragons and Mick’s covered in poison acid. Someone needs their head examined. 

Queen seems to think so too; his tail lashes furiously from side to side. “But – he’s Leonard Snart! He planned the whole thing! He - ”

“No.” Her voice is even, refined, and a hundred times more powerful than Queen’s bellow. “The sins of the father are not the sins of the son, or the daughter, or the wingmate of the son, for that matter.” She notices Len’s doubletake, and a faint smile seems to cross her face. “It is not them we seek.”

She begins a slow dive, and Queen’s entourage dives after her one by one without hesitation. Queen curses and follows them. The Ebony Raptor is the last to go, turning her mask-like face towards Len for a moment before beginning her descent in a strange, spinning flight pattern. And then it’s just the three of them in a damson-dark, pre-dawn sky.

“Lenny?” Lisa’s voice is small and guilty.

Sometime, when they’re safe, Len is going to have A Talk with his baby sister. But they’re still not safe, and Mick’s eyes are barely open now. The stains are growing. “We have to go, Lise.” Gently, he nudges Mick around until he’s facing east. “Come on, Mick,” he whispers. “Just a little further.”

Mick rumbles faintly, and it’s only a shadow of his normal voice, but he follows one wingbeat behind Len as he begins to head away from the mountain. “Lenny?” Lisa asks again. 

“Where are we going?” 

“Somewhere safe, Lise,” Len tells her, his mind already setting a course, even as he strains to stay alert for the moment Mick’s wings begin to fail, something telling him that moment may not be very far off. “Somewhere safe.”


	4. Not Just A Dream

Mick does not want to wake up, dammit.

It’d been such a fantastic dream, although he could have done without the whole burned-by-poison-acid portion of it. Come to think of it, his scales are throbbing dully; he must have rolled around in his sleep and spent too long in the lava. He needs to get up and cool off in the snow outside – although there does seem to be a faint, fresh breeze somewhere to the right of his head. Maybe if he stayed in this position, he could catch a few more hours of sleep and hopefully return to that dream…

Nope, it’s not working, breeze or no breeze. Grumbling a little, Mick cracks his eyes open, blinking a few times to clear the ash and sulphur out of the corners. Did he mist something over in his sleep? That’s going to be a bitch to clean. He blinks a little more and yawns.

“You sure as hell took your time about it.”

Mick sits up so fast the world goes black. He has to pause for a minute and just wait for the lights to stop flashing in front of his eyes. He must have rammed something head-on last night, which, bad idea. Once everything has slowed down a little more, he looks in the direction of that whistling voice.

A pure-white Blood-Ice is staring at him with blue, blue eyes.

Oh. So it wasn’t a dream.

That’s…both very good and very bad, Mick decides, as a wave of nausea hits him. There’s a flash of white and the next thing he knows Len has grabbed the edge of his ruff with all his limbs and shoved his head into an icy river. Mick’s about to wallop him with his tail-tusks when he realizes that he’s still breathing and that the water’s doing a pretty good job of clearing away the fog in his head. He stays under until both his mind and his mouth are completely scoured and then rears himself back out, shaking his ruff. Len whistles in evident approval.

“How’d I get here?” asks Mick, and then they both grin at the shared memory. “I figured you could uses some cooling down,” Len drawls, then sobers visibly. “You were pretty out of it after the first two hours. We touched down here just after sunrise, and the gatekeeper said we could stay as long as we liked.”

“Gatekeeper?” frowns Mick. Where the hell has Len brought them? He sits up again, this time with more lucidity, looks around and nearly swallows his tongue. Yes, they’re on the edge of a river, but the water it contains is no ordinary water; it’s iridescent and opaque and swirls with an ancient, living power. The sunlit, snow-dusted forests and hills around them look peaceful enough, and the pure sky overhead seems to stretch forever, but Mick isn’t fooled; he knows a one-way sight shield when he sees one. “Holy shit. Are we where I think we are?”

“If you’re thinking of a WoundedWing Refuge on the eastern edge, you’d be right.”

“You got us past a Refuge gatekeeper after we’d just murdered nine dragons?” Mick may be having a slight nervous breakdown. “How the hell did you pull that off?”

“I stopped for a bath,” smirks Len. When Mick glares at him, he smiles and says, “You’ll understand when you see her, I promise.”

Micks grumbles for a moment before a thought strikes him. “Hey, where’s Lisa?”

Almost before he finishes the question there’s a golden blur behind Len and then he’s being tackled-hugged by a Goldspark dragonet roughly the same length as one of his legs. Lisa is four moons old, a tiny sun-hued thing with downy feathers lining her miniscule wings and a few curly plumes dancing on her forehead. She has the beginnings of Len’s claws, bronze rather than silver, and a few half-grown sheaths at her elbows that are equally likely to sprout quills or blades. Safely away from her father, Mick knows, she and her weapons alike will begin to develop much faster, and with Len to train her, there won’t be another dragon who can touch her.

Thinking of Len’s nestfather, however, sends a muted wave of discomfort through the half-healed poison scars he can feel all over him. Of course, Len notices the slight colour change in his ruff right away, and gently distracts Lisa by encouraging her to check out the jewel mines where shellshocked dragons get their therapy with someone called Sara. When she’s gone, Len turns back to Mick, who blurts out, “I’m sorry,” before he can open his mouth.

Len’s forehead creases. “What for?”

Mick can’t help cringing. Parts of that night are coming back to him in flashes. He remembers going into that cave and almost stepping on Lisa, shivering uncontrollably in a crevice right in the cave mouth, remembers waking her up and being convinced that she was about to scream bloody murder until she tasted the air and scented Lenny on his scales. He remembers turning around after picking her up to find Len’s nestfather, the arrogant bastard, charging at him from the pile of stolen emeralds among which he’d used his Changewing camouflage to hide, spitting acid everywhere. He doesn’t remember what the bastard shrieked at him, doesn’t remember fighting his way out of the cave and then losing control of his fire, doesn’t remember attacking Len as he knows he must have done. Len looks straight into him, though, and his eyes flash. “No, Mick,” he hisses firmly. “It wasn’t your fault, whatever you’re telling yourself right now. I was a fool to let you take him on alone – he knows a lot about getting into people’s heads. And he deserved whatever you did to him – and what the Hoods are going to do to what’s left of him.”

“Ain’t that,” mumbles Mick. “I…hurt you…”

Len shrugs. “I’ve had worse, Mick. And you didn’t know what you were doing. We’ll be better prepared next time we have to do something like this.”

He seems so calm about the whole thing – Mick’s loss of control, his nestfather’s death. Strangely calm, given that he’s only fourteen moons old and hadn’t, as far as Mick knew, ever murdered a dragon before he slit the throats of eight Changewings barely two nights ago. Mick latches onto something else he’d said for the moment, even as he makes a mental note to come back to this conversation sometime soon. “So the Hoods tracked him down, then?”

“Yeah, Queen was about ready to murder us all, I think, but then some blue dragon he had with him - Felicity - pointed them after my nestfather,” Len says, seeming relieved at the change of topic. “Said we were innocents. She looked a bit nuts, if you ask me, but I’m not complaining because they backed off on her say so -”

“Because she’s a Pathfinder,” says Mick. Memories are flashing before his eyes – piercing night air, his scales rotting with poison, a sharp bite across his snout – a powder-blue dragon with whirlpool eyes - 

Len looks blank. “She’s a what?”

“Pathfinders are some of the rarest, most dangerous dragons on the planet,” Mick tells him, thinking of the unbelievable stories his herd used to trade on the shores of Icebanks. “This Felicity is the real reason the Hoods of Starling are so lethal. A Pathfinder can read the truth of any situation within seconds, whether it’s on the other side of the planet or right in front of them and they’ve got the power to manipulate that truth, mess with your mind and how much you know. They’re practically omniscient. You can’t just ignore what comes out of a Pathfinder’s mouth.”

If he didn’t know Len so well by now, he would have missed the way his tailblades quiver. Mick stops and thinks about what he just said, and the blue Pathfinder’s voice floats back to him, 

“The sins of the father are not the sins of the son, or the daughter, or the wingmate of the son, for that matter.”

The edges of his ruff flare ochre, responding to the tactile memory of something iridescent and filmy and cool.

“You gave me a wreath.”

Len’s wings shift from side to side. “It was meant to be a cloud, but you were standing on my chest.”

“No, you idiot – You. Gave Me. A Wreath.”

Len looks hopelessly confused. "I know I did. I had to get your attention somehow."

Mick groans. So there really is only one way this can end.

He breathes out.

An elegant, auburn-and-ochre ring floats from between his jaws and towards Len. Len watching with huge, stunned eyes as it settles around his slender neck, contrasting brilliantly with his diamond scales, shines there for a moment, and then blows off into the pine-scented air of the Refuge.

Mick feels a little smug. Yeah, he can do that too.

“You – you’re my wingmate too,” Len shrills in disbelief.

Mick wants to thump him. “Len, you didn’t think this was a one-way deal, did you?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Len admits. “It hasn’t been the most normal…courtship.”

He stumbles so adorably over the last word that Mick would make a grab for him then and there except that he’s not sure how much damage he did the last time. “Lenny,” he settles for purring instead. “The courtship happens after the exchanging of wreaths. You know, just sure everyone’s absolutely sure they’re set on the wedding.”

Len stares at him, and Mick realizes too late that maybe it’s a little early to be springing the concept of marriage on the dragon he’s taken as his wingmate in less than a week. He braces himself for Len to say he made a mistake, or bolt, or start laying into Mick with that tail of his. 

But then Lenny fucking starts to trill. 

Maybe this might actually work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I keep adding chapters, but there's just something about this fic that makes me want to spin it out. But I promise I'll try to make the next chapter the last one, Len and Mick have to make it to the (draconic) altar sometime. And no, that was not a spoiler, you all know it's going to happen anyway.


	5. Himnariki

Felicity stretches luxuriously, feeling each of her scales crackle a little in the process. She really should make an effort to get more exercise. The dragons who visit Himnariki spend their most of their time down at the beach with the sand and sea; the fact that most of them still consider Pathfinders to be unlucky makes her little clifftop even more isolated. 

She doesn’t mind. She finds that seeing the bigger picture makes it a little easier to decipher the truths of the world.

She doesn’t use her powers when she comes to Himnariki, which is perhaps why she’s been coming back more often than usual. She’ll never give them up, of course, but after nearly thirty years the continuous stream of knowledge can become too much, even for her. Oliver and the rest of the Hoods will hold the fort; until Laurel comes for her in a week she’s content to sit on her cliff and watch the visitors to Himnariki, speculating about their lives and resisting the urge to immediately know everything there is to know about them. That is, until she catches an unusual scent and looks up to see three dragons materialize from beyond the sight-shield and glide towards the beach. 

She’s not surprised to see that one of them is a gorgeous Goldspark, rippling with bronze feather-blades and corkscrew quills and sporting a fantastic crown of rainbow plumes. Goldsparks are one of the few dragons who don’t have a specific extreme habitat to retreat to, which is why they prefer Himnariki, whose frigid seas and warm shores, bounded on one side by scorching desert and on the other by ancient glaciers, makes it impossible to link with one single breed. The other two, however, are a little unexpected. One is a gigantic Flamevein with a ruff whose colours make Felicity envious, studded with flashing tusks; the other is a thirty-foot Blood-Ice. His scales, white at their base, shimmer with flashes of turquoise and cobalt and silver – iceberg camouflage; the shape of his blades and feathers suggests that the Goldspark is his sister. The two males are a wingmated pair; the scent of their wreath reaches her even at this distance, bringing with it an irresistible surge of memory and recognition, and Felicity throws her resolution out the window and gives in to it.

Early dawn air. Oliver’s rage, Laurel’s hesitance. A Blood-Ice reeking of fear and first-murders and desperation, a wounded Flamevein, a terrified Goldspark dragonet. A newly offered wreath.

Leonard. Mick. Lisa. Innocents all.

She remembers how Laurel had lingered to watch them go when Oliver had finally let them leave, remembers Laurel telling her how she’d shared the story with Sara through the telepathic bond that all Raptor nestsiblings possess, remembers how the Ivory Raptor had told Laurel, that very same dawn, of the Blood-Ice in his fourteenth moon who’d flown wingmate and nestsibling to her Refuge on the eastern edge and swallowed the pride of his kind to beg her to take them in. She remembers Sara’s wistful description of how they’d begun their courtship on the shores of her river, both half unable to believe the gift they’d each been given.

Himnariki’s first marriage in eons takes place four moons later, on the highest peaks of its desert, high enough that the sky winds blew the scorching air of the desert far out to sea and left only warmth. A volcanic rumble, a golden flute and a high, clear trill ring out as the wingmate wreath rings each foreleg, above the corresponding moon mark. Sara laughs, because Ivory Raptors have a knack for seeking out trouble, and Barry, Caitlyn and Cisco fly around scattering jewels with stars in their eyes, because some breeds, but especially Windwings, cannot resist a good love story.

Felicity sees the moons roll past, watches Len and Mick fight for those who can’t fight for themselves from continent to continent and do a little thieving on the side, which she does not deem necessary to inform Oliver of, watches Lisa accumulate a hoard that threatens even Oliver’s prestige – and that’s just if you count the gifts from would-be suitors. She watches them fly to Molten, to Icebanks, to the silent sea-floor of Deepworld, to the sun-drenched islands of Inferno Bay, but returning every moon, without fail, to Himnariki, a place where none of their demons will ever touch them, where cool warmth and warm coolness are not the stuff of legend, where any dragon can make themselves a home.

When Felicity opens her eyes, the trio has just landed on the beach. For once in her life, she feels a strange urge to see what happens next for herself, and not through someone else’s echoes; ignoring the voice in her head, which sounds suspiciously like Oliver, she unfolds her wings and launches herself off the cliff. Unlike Laurel and the rest of the Hoods, Oliver still hasn’t learned not to underestimate her just because she has no defensive features, still hasn’t learned the potentially devastating power of truth. She’s going to be fine.

She lands a few hundred yards down the beach from the newcomers, and as predicted, most of the dragons around take to the air with no attempt at subtlety. However, the flapping of their wings is drowned out by a piercing whir as Sara spins out of the sky towards her. Her plumes stream out behind her head, two shades brighter than Felicity’s wings. “Hey, Felicity! I can’t believe you finally decided to come down off that godforsaken cliff!”

“Greetings, Pathfinder,” murmurs Nyssa, drifting serenely in her wake. The regal crimson Demonslayer looks far more at peace than in her warrior days, watching her wingmate with a fond expression. “Forgive my Beloved. I trust you are well?”

“I’m great, Nyssa,” replies Felicity. Sara launches into a spiel about scale replenishing and wing treatments, towing Felicity towards one of the Windwings who run the healing caves. As she transfers her spiel to them, with an occasional languid comment from Nyssa, Felicity looks up the beach. 

Leonard and Lisa are playing tag. Lisa darts to and fro in the air above the ocean, taunting her nestbrother, who speeds after her underwater, occasionally leaping bodily into the air to grab her tailfeathers. Both of them are laughing. Both of them are free. Felicity turns her attention to Mick, and starts slightly as she finds him staring straight at her. 

He was very far from lucid the last time they met, but there’s no doubt that he recognizes her. Flameveins are always far more intelligent than what the draconic community gives them credit for. Mick’s amber eyes move from her to Leonard and Lisa to Sara and back again, and then his mouth crooks up in a small smile. His ruff flares a warm, lazy red. Felicity smiles back at him, then turns away as Sara starts up a non-stop litany of “Please come try the geysers of boiling steam with me!” and Nyssa attempts to placate her. She’s seen what she came to see.

Across the beach, Len and Lisa stagger onto the sand and collapse in a panting heap. “Miiiiiick,” whines Lisa, “Come and play!”

Mick turns around, looking distracted, and his gaze falls on Len, whose scales are flushed bright blue, and whose feathers are all sticking up the wrong way. Colour streaks across his ruff and Len hauls himself upright. He’s never going to be as tall as Mick, standing a good twenty feet short of Mick’s thirty foot head-height. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Mick’s stomped across the beach and wrapped his wings around him before he’s quite finishes the question. Len inhales. Thirty moons later and wrapped up in Mick is still the warmest he’s ever felt. His unfeathered head fits snugly into the space between Mick’s chest and the edge of his ruff and he snuffles a little, tucking himself in closer out of sheer habit. His wingmate wreath, fire opals set in hexagonal red sapphires, is pressed against Mick’s chest along with his foreleg, while Mick’s own wreath of lapis lazuli and molten silver is wedged between his wings. “Love you, Mick”, he trills.

Mick’s chest moves, but whatever he’s going to say is cut off by the wingful of sand that Lisa dumps over their heads. Len’s after her in a flash, coughing up jets of pure snow that shatter in a million starbursts against the gold armour that materializes over her scales. They hurtle around the beach, scattering dragons left and right, and Mick bursts out laughing. The laugh fades to a quiet smile as he watches Len’s eyes flash with joy as he somersaults through the air, still the brightest thing he’s ever seen. “Love you too, Lenny,” he rumbles, and feels the glow of their shared wingmate wreath grow stronger, the way it’s being glowing for thirty moons in the sparkling ocean air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest, I'm not sure how most of this chapter ended up being seen with Felicity's all-seeing eyes, except that she's another character in the CW verse who I feel the writers haven't done justice by. And the whole moment with Felicity holding an umbrella over Mick during the crossover event got me thinking. But anyway! Here we are! We've arrived at the happy ending! And I am so, so grateful to everyone who read, left kudos on, and commented on this fic. Your support and feedback is the most amazing thing and I can't wait to see what you think of my upcoming pieces! Till next time! Here's to ColdWave!


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